The second update of Metropolis hard fork, called the Constantinople hard fork, should have been finalized on 13th of August 2018, tested for two months and released by the second week of October. Yet, the fork got postponed to January 2019 after developers detected mistakes in its program during the testing period.

According to the sources, the Ethereum Constantinople hard fork is now set to happen between January 14-18th once block number 7080000 is mined.

Currently, the date is not precisely set, but the sources suggest, that Constantinople will most likely activate on Wednesday, Jan 16th, probably around 7 am UTC with a block 7080000. The current average block time is around 15 seconds and today we are in a block number 7035939, so there are 44 061 blocks to go. The preliminary calculations show that there are around 5 days left until we reach the mentioned block (7035939/7080000).

However, this will make a job a bit harder for many of the exchanges that announced their support of the Fork. For now there is 19 exchanges that officially confirmed support.

Major cryptocurrency exchanges OKEx and Huobi among the first announced their intention to support the upcoming Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople hard fork.

OKEx’s management team noted that the exchange would be taking a snapshot of all its accounts at block height 7,080,000. Huobi advised traders to deposit their ETH tokens into the platform as it will help them to manage all technical issues related to the network upgrade.

London based crypto exchange CEX.IO announced that at the moment the company is making the necessary technical adjustments that will be able to enable the support need for the Constantinople upgrade. Just before the upgrade takes place, the CEX.IO will be stopping all the deposits and withdraws that are made in ETH. It is just to ensure that the customer’s funds are kept secure, but once the upgrade is completed all the ETH holders will be able to quickly resume with their trading of the coins on the exchanges just as before, but now on a better working system.

The same goes for the US-based cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex that confirmed finishing all the preparations required to get ready for Constantinople hard fork.

Binance asked holders of ETH to allow sufficient time for deposits to be processed in full before the aforementioned block height is achieved. The exchange went on to assure traders that they will handle all technical requirements related to the event.

The Constantinople hard fork has been lauded for achieving consensus across the Ethereum community. However, there is a slim chance that their might be other hard forks as developers and other Ethereum community members wish to carry out their own versions upgrading the Ethereum network. Binance has therefore added the following information in case of such outcomes:

“Should there be any other hard forks or airdrops during the Constantinople hard fork period, we invite these respective project teams to contact us at airdrop@binance.com for further discussion.”

OKCoin also confirmed their support advising their clients to deposit their Ethereum tokens into OKCoin as they will be handling all the technical requirements for the hard fork. Similar goes for IDAX that also recommended clients to deposit Ethereum tokens into IDAX.

A popular Indian cryptocurrency exchange Koinex stated that the company will be also supporting the much-discussed Ethereum [ETH] Constantinople hard fork. Koinex had tweeted:

Announcement: We will be supporting the upcoming Ethereum Constantinople Hard Fork. The Hard Fork will take place when the block height is at 7,080,000 and the estimated date of the fork is 16th January 2019. Stay tuned for further updates.

BitMart also confirmed their support for the upcoming Fork. Similar to other exchanges they are asking their clients to leave sufficient time for deposits to be processed in full prior to the block height.

One of the last joined exchanges is New Zealand-based exchange Cryptopia who also announced their support on their official Twitter account saying:

The rest of the exchanges that announced their support (and we, at CoinSpeaker, will try to keep the list updated as possible) are Chinese digital exchanges Bibox and Hotbit, decentralized exchange EtherFlyer, crypto exchange BitForex, Indian crypto exchange WazirX and multi crypto wallet Exodus Wallet. Also, support comes from transaction mining exchange platform Catex, Indian platform Indodax, Thai crypto exchange TOK and Singaporean crypto exchange ABCC.

Mid December last year found ETH in the number 3 spot according to market capitalization. This was after XRP edged out the King of Smart Contracts from the number 2 slot as the bear market accelerated with BTC trading at $3,200 on the 15th of December. At the same time, ETH was trading at around $83. At the time of writing ETH was trading at $134.84 with market capitalization of $14,063,336,619.